Sunday, April 22, 2012

I'll be leaving later this week for a return visit to Gettysburg, PA, for the Greyhounds In Gettysburg event. I always look forward to seeing so many Greyhounds in one place, as well as for the chance to photograph some of them in the beautiful and historic scenery there. Meeting some of the people that, up till now, I've only corresponded with via e-mail, message board, or blog is a plus, too. And, of course, seeing my greyhound friends on the east coast will be great.

And...I get to see Mandy, Sadie's half-sister, once again. We will get together at Sachs covered bridge, just outside of the Gettysburg Military Park.

The forecast is for cool but sunny weather. I'm hoping the ticks aren't as bad as I've read they could be this year.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Romeo and Tadeo are two galgos that I did a photo shoot with in Solvang. That Saturday morning it had remained overcast, the night before having been foggy. So with all that cloud cover the light was very diffuse and wonderful.

They live with two greyhounds. One day, soon I hope, I'll get to go photograph all four of them together.

I was really pleased with how their pictures came out (despite the white of Romeo's face getting blown out). It was probably the best light I had during the two days of shooting I did.

If you're not familiar with galgos, they come from Spain, are in the sighthound family (which includes greyhounds), and come in two varieties: smooth- and rough-coat. They are used for hunting game. It is because of what befalls to too many of them when they are no longer wanted for hunting that prompted a number of people to form adoption groups to get them out of Spain. Many galgos are adopted in Europe and in the US.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; aperture-priority, with aperture set to f/2.8; top picture: camera chose shutter speed of 1/500 second at ISO 800; bottom picture: camera chose shutter speed of 1/2000 second at ISO 400; cloudy white balance; matrix-metered; normal JPG.)

Friday, April 6, 2012

I was lucky enough to have several sessions to do during the Solvang Greyhound Fest at the end of February. One of those sessions was with a veteran of several Solvang events, Belle. If I remember correctly, she's 13(!).

She is a beautiful fawn. She was very patient with me as I tried to get different perspectives of her. I ended up pretty much repeating the same kind of head shot. The problem with using the garden at the hotel we stayed was that you didn't want to see the second story of the hotel building that surrounds the garden on two sides, or the wooden fence that encloses it. So you ended up standing and pointing the camera down at your subject. Belle was not interested in lying down so that I could get a different kind of photo. But that's okay -- I want my subject to be comfortable more than anything else while I photograph.

One picture of Belle in particular reminded me very much of a photo I took of our second greyhound, Nikki. In both pictures the girls are bright-eyed, and have big smiles. This is Belle's picture:

I ended up cropping the original frame after I had removed a number of spots, played with the tone curves a bit, and added a vignette.

She is a sweetheart; I'm glad I finally got to do a session after all these years.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm f//1.8 lens; aperture-priority, with aperture set at f/2.8; camera chose shutter speed of 1/2500 second at ISO 400; center-weighted metered; auto white balance; shot in RAW.)

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Actually, this is what happens when basement cat meets a small-dog carrier.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm lens; aperture-priority, with aperture set to f/2.8; camera chose shutter speed of 1/8 second at ISO 800; auto white balance; matrix-metered with +0.7 exposure compensation; converted to black-and-white using Lightroom; normal JPG.)